Types of sources

“The literature” consists of the published works that document a scholarly conversation on a specific topic within and between disciplines. In “the literature,” you will find documents that explain the background of your topic. You will also find controversies and unresolved questions that can inspire your own project. By now in your psychology academic career, you’ve probably heard that you need to get “peer-reviewed journal articles.” But what are those exactly? How do they differ from news articles or encyclopedias? This section of the text will help you to differentiate the different types of literature.

First, let’s discuss periodicals. Periodicals include journals, trade publications, magazines, and newspapers. While they may appear similar, particularly online, each of these periodicals has unique features designed for a specific purpose. Magazine and newspaper articles are usually written by journalists. They are intended to be short and understandable for the average adult, they contain color images and advertisements, and they are designed as commodities to be sold to an audience. Magazines may contain primary or secondary literature depending on the article in question. Psychology Today is an example of a magazine for psychologists and those interested in psychology. An article that is a primary source would gather information as an event happened, like an interview with a victim of a local fire, or relate original research done by the journalists, like the Guardian newspaper’s The Counted webpage which tracks how many people were killed by police officers in the United States (The Guardian, n.d.).

You may be wondering if magazines are acceptable sources of information in a psychology course. If you were in my class, I would advise against using magazines as sources. There are some exceptions like the Guardian page mentioned above or breaking news about a policy or community, but I advise against using magazines and newspapers because most of the information they publish is secondary literature. Secondary sources interpret, discuss, and summarize primary sources. Often, news articles will summarize a study done in an academic journal. Your job in this course is to read the original source of the information, in this case, the academic journal article itself. Journalists are not scientists. If you have seen articles about how chocolate cures cancer or how drinking whiskey can extend your life, you should understand how journalists can exaggerate or misinterpret results. Careful scholars will critically examine the primary source, rather than relying on someone else’s summary. Many newspapers and magazines also contain opinion articles, which are even less reputable, as the author will choose facts to support their viewpoint and exclude facts that contract their viewpoint. Nevertheless, newspaper and magazine articles are excellent places to start your journey into the literature, as they do not require specialized knowledge to understand and may inspire deeper inquiry.

A main shortcoming of newspapers, magazines, and trade publications is their lack of peer review. Peer review refers to a formal process in which other esteemed researchers and experts ensure your work meets the standards and expectations of the professional field. While these publications do contain a staff of editors, the level of review is not as stringent as academic journal articles. As illustrated below, peer review is the part of the publication cycle that acts as the gate-keeper to ensure that only top-quality articles are published. While peer review is far from perfect, the process provides for stricter scrutiny of scientific publications.

In summary, newspapers and other popular press publications are useful for getting general topic ideas. Scholarly journals are the conversation of the scholars who are doing research in a specific discipline and publishing their research findings.

Types of journal articles

As you’ve probably heard by now, academic journal articles are regarded as the most reputable sources of information. Journal articles are written by scholars with the intended audience of other scholars (like you!) interested in the subject matter. The articles are often long and contain extensive references for the arguments made by the author. The journals themselves are often dedicated to a single topic, like group processes or child development, and include articles that seek to advance the body of knowledge about their chosen topic.

Most journals are peer-reviewed or refereed, which means a panel of scholars reviews articles to decide if they should be accepted into a specific publication. Scholarly journals provide articles of interest to experts or researchers in a discipline. For example, a social psychologist might read journals such as the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology or the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, while a developmental psychologist might subscribe to Developmental Science or the Journal of Applied Developmental Science. An editorial board of respected scholars (peers) reviews all articles submitted to a journal. Editors and volunteer reviewers decide if the article provides a noteworthy contribution to the field and if it should be published. For this reason, journal articles are the main source of information for researchers and for literature reviews. You can tell whether a journal is peer reviewed by going to its website. Usually, under the “About Us” section, the website will list the editorial board or otherwise note its procedures for peer review. If a journal does not provide such information, you may have found a “predatory journal.” These journals will publish any article—no matter how bad it is—as long as the author pays them. Not all journals are created equal!

Journal articles fall into a few different categories. Empirical articles which apply theory to a behavior and reports the results of a quantitative or qualitative data analysis conducted by the author. These are the most common types of journal articles in psychology because there are many researchers across the globe conducting studies and publishing them in journals. Just because an article includes quantitative or qualitative results does not mean it is an empirical journal article. Since most articles contain a literature review with empirical findings, you need to make sure the findings reported in the study are from the author’s own analysis. Fortunately, empirical articles follow a similar structure—introduction, method, results, and discussion sections appear in that order. While the exact headings may differ slightly from publication to publication and other sections like conclusions, implications, or limitations may appear, this general structure applies to nearly all empirical journal articles.

Theoretical articles, by contrast, do not follow a set structure. They follow whatever format the author finds most useful to organize their information. Theoretical articles discuss a theory, conceptual model, or framework for understanding a problem. They may delve into philosophy or values, as well. Theoretical articles help you understand how to think about a topic and may help you make sense of the results of empirical studies. Practical articles describe “how things are done” (Wallace & Wray, 2016, p. 20). They are usually shorter than other types of articles and are intended to inform practitioners of a discipline on current issues. They may also provide a reflection on a “hot topic” in the practice domain, a complex client situation, or an issue that may affect the profession as a whole.

No one type of article is better than the other, as each serves a different purpose. Theoretical articles will help you understand the social theory behind your topic. Empirical articles should test those theories quantitatively or create those theories qualitatively, a process we will discuss in greater detail later in this book.  Practical articles will help you understand a practitioner’s perspective, though these are less useful when writing a literature review, as they only present a single person’s opinions on a topic.

Other sources of information

As mentioned earlier, newspaper and magazine articles are good places to start your search, though they should not be the end of your search. Another source that students commonly flock to is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a marvel of human knowledge, as anyone can contribute to the digital encyclopedia. The entries for each Wikipedia article are overseen by skilled and specialized editors who volunteer their time and knowledge to making sure their articles are correct and up to date. Wikipedia is an example of a tertiary source. We reviewed primary and secondary sources in the previous section. Tertiary sources synthesize or distill primary and secondary sources. Examples of tertiary sources include encyclopedias, directories, dictionaries, and textbooks like this one. Tertiary sources are an excellent place to start, but are not a good place to end your search.

As we’ve discussed, secondary and tertiary sources are great places to begin gathering background information on a topic, but as your study of the topic progresses towards your research project, you will have to begin using primary sources. Academic journal articles are one of the primary sources that we will discuss the most in this textbook, as they are an excellent source to use in formal research papers. However, it is important to understand how other types of sources can be utilized as well.

Books contain important scholarly information. They are particularly helpful for theoretical, philosophical, and historical inquiry. For example, in the author’s research on self-determination for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, they needed to define and explore the concept of self-determination. They learned how to define it from the philosophical literature on self-determination and the advocacy literature contained in books. You can use books to learn definitions and key concepts, to identify keywords, and to find additional resources for further information. They will also help you to understand the scope of the topic, its underlying foundations, and how the topic has developed over time.

You may notice that some books contain chapters that resemble academic journal articles. These are called edited volumes, and they contain articles that may not have made it into academic journals or seminal articles that are republished in the book. Edited volumes are considered less reputable than journal articles, as they do not have as strong of a peer review process. However, papers in social science journals will often include references to books and edited volumes.

Additional sources include dissertations and theses. These two sources are rich, and they often contain extensive reference lists that you can scan for further resources, however they are considered gray literature because they are not peer reviewed. The accuracy and validity of the paper itself may depend on the school that awarded the doctoral or master’s degree to the author. Having completed a dissertation myself, I know that they take a long time to write and a long time to read through. If you come across a dissertation that is relevant, it is a good idea to read the literature review and plumb the sources the author uses in your literature search. However, the data analysis from these sources is considered less reputable as it has not passed through peer review yet. Consider searching for journal articles by the author to see if any of the results passed peer review. You will also be thankful that journal articles are much shorter than dissertations and theses!

The final source of information we must talk about is webpages. The author of this chapter writes, “My graduate research focused on substance abuse and drugs, and I was fond of reading Drug War Rant (http://www.drugwarrant.com/), a blog about drug policy. It provided me with breaking news about drug policy and editorial opinion about the drug war. I would never cite the blog in a research proposal, but it was an excellent source of information that warranted further investigation. Webpages will also help you locate professional organizations and human service agencies that address your research topic. The website of an organization may include social media feeds, reports, publications, or “news” sections that can clue you into important topics to study. Because anyone can begin their own webpage, they are usually not considered scholarly sources to use in formal writing, but they are still useful when you are first learning about a topic. Additionally, many advocacy webpages will provide references for the facts they cite, providing you with the primary source of the information.”

As you think about each source, remember:

All information sources are not created equal. Sources can vary greatly in terms of how carefully they are researched, written, edited, and reviewed for accuracy. Common sense will help you identify obviously questionable sources, such as tabloids that feature tales of alien abductions, or personal websites with glaring typos. Sometimes, however, a source’s reliability—or lack of it—is not so obvious…You will consider criteria such as the type of source, its intended purpose and audience, the author’s (or authors’) qualifications, the publication’s reputation, any indications of bias or hidden agendas, how current the source is, and the overall quality of the writing, thinking, and design. (Writing for Success, 2015, p. 448).

While each of these sources is an important part of how we learn about a topic, your research should focus on finding academic journal articles about your topic. These are the primary sources of the research world. While it may be acceptable and necessary to use other primary sources—like books, government reports, or an investigative article by a newspaper or magazine—academic journal articles are preferred. Finding these journal articles is the topic of the next section.

This section contains material from 2.2 Sources of Information in Scientific Inquiry in Social Work by Matthew DeCarlo and is used under a